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Black Phosphorous – the birth of a new wonder material
- ableal 12y agoBullseye hit on a pet peeve of many years: the confusion between phosphorus (a noun) and phosphorous (an adjective).
- ars 12y agoYou mean the difference between the element and the quality of glowing? The adjective is falling out of usage, so you can assume references are to the first unless you are sure otherwise.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoBut it could be phosphorus black phosphorus ?
- dvanduzer 12y agoI don't know anyone who uses that stuff, except maybe Hotblack Desiato.
- ableal 12y agoThe chemical compounds, for instance, are phosphorous this or that. (If you speak a romance language, it jumps out at you because the adjective has an extra syllable - e.g. 'fosforo' vs. 'fosforoso'.)
- waqf 12y agoThat's true of phosphorous acid (where the name distinguishes it from phosphoric acid), but otherwise English chemical names use the noun form of the positive ion (e.g. phosphorus pentoxide).
- digikata 12y agoYes, I think the adjective in it's more modern form usually occurs as 'phosphorescent'.
- RobertKerans 12y ago> You mean the difference between the element and the quality of glowing? Or just something containing/made partly of phosphorus (compounds of phosphorus being the most obvious examples, as @ars says): that's common (though glowing with a phosphorous light does have a lovely cadence)
- waqf 12y agoOh, God, yes: the only similar example that I see abused as much is callus vs callous.
- _random_ 12y ago"...heralding a new era of nanoelectronic devices..." Did I just miss the previous nano-electronic era?! Where can I get my artificial nano-robotic ever-rejuvenating immune system injection?
- lsaferite 12y agoI would assume they mean on era containing nano-electronic devices where the previous era did not contain nano-electronic devices.
- digikata 12y agoThe output of the previous nano-electronic era might be considered the MEMs accelerometers and rate sensors packed into most smartphones, DLP micro mirrors, etc....
- InclinedPlane 12y agoThat would be now. The average person owns devices containing billions of components that are tens of nanometers in scale of smaller.
- wyager 12y ago>Did I just miss the previous nano-electronic era?! You probably made that post using electronic components less than 30nm wide.